SUMMERTIME OUTDOOR PIANOS RETURNING TO NYC

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NEW YORK 
A new player is coming to the city’s street scene this summer: everyday New Yorkers.

Sing for Hope Pianos will take 88 rehabbed pianos, ask artists and school children to customize each with crazy colors and designs and then plant them throughout New York City’s streets and parks and let anyone — and everyone — plink their ivory keys.

The two-week festival first debuted in 2010. It returned the following year under the name Pop-Up Pianos but went on hiatus last year due to lack of funding. It’s making a comeback through a major donation from the New York-based Greek yogurt company Chobani.

The festival is part of an outreach program by Sing for Hope, a grass-roots group of over 1,000 artists who volunteer to make art broadly accessible to everyone.

The pianos, mostly donated uprights but also some grands, will be placed in some of the most iconic New York City spots this summer such as Times Square and Central Park and in more remote places like the Far Rockaways, Staten Island and areas underserved by the arts.

“We’re sort of an artists’ Peace Corp,” said Sing for Hope co-founder Camille Zamora. “The idea is that some people don’t get a chance necessarily to have access to great art, like in hospitals and the elderly. There are children in our city who do not have regular arts education.”

The festival doesn’t start until June 1, but it’s already humming with activity since the logistics for setting it up are quite complex: Finding “piano buddies” to look after the pianos once they’re on the street; assembling a team of technicians to keep them well tuned; and, of course, getting all the pianos into a large warehouse where artists will transform them into works of art.